Going Solo ... With Others

Garry and I cooked up the idea, both nervous about the prospect of heading out with a hiker we barely knew. It’s always touchy when that happens: Will the other person be too fast, too slow? Will they not get the same joy out of a particular view? Will they gab too much or not at all?

The downside of solo hiking is safety. I’ve rarely felt any danger hiking solo. But there are those moments when it would be nice to have a fellow hiker to lean on.

It was a three-day weekend, and Wilson joined in on the plan at the last minute. Our plan was to hit six “official” 4,000 footers in the White Mountains, hiking north to south along the Carter-Moriah Trail, along the Wildcats, and then down the ski slopes and back into the valley.

We got a relatively late start, hitting the trailhead around noonish. It starts off steep at the very beginning. But it’s not a technically difficult trail, just plodding; it gets the blood pumping.

Wilson took off like lightning up the trail, I was in the middle and Garry brought up the rear.

We were in the trees until Mt. Surprise, a small mountain at 2,194 feet. It’s a rocky outcropping with quartz bleeding through it. And from here, the trail has scattered about it, silvery slivers of shiny chips.

Garry and I lingered atop Mt. Surprise, encased in mist. The clouds had rolled in and there were no longer any views. It made for a surreal atmosphere -- something out of a set of the original “Star Trek,” as though we were on a set with dry ice behind the curtain, sending billowing white clouds across our rocky stage.

We caught up with Wilson and the three of us hiked together the rest of the way, picking blueberries from the side of the trail. Sorry bears! They were so plump and juicy.

We hit the first of our 4Ks of the weekend: Mt. Moriah (4,049 feet), and shuffled on quickly.

We made it to the Imp Shelter just after it started to pour buckets of rain. We had stopped just a few minutes beforehand to throw on our pack covers and Gore-Tex gear -- just in time.

It was 7 p.m. on a holiday weekend, and there were no more tent platforms available and the shelter was full. But Moira The Caretaker let us set up our tents in a relatively flat dirt area just beyond the shelter.

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